Australian personnel aboard a US nuclear submarine during an attack on an Iranian vessel highlight the deeper implications of AUKUS \u2013 and the risk of Australia being drawn into American wars.<\/p>\n
The AUKUS trilateral pact has cost Australia dear. Over the decades, it will cost the Australian taxpayers well over the projected A$368 billion being assessed by the wonks in Canberra. Nuclear-powered submarines of the Virginia Class may or may not be delivered.<\/p>\n
An Australian-UK designed equivalent may or may not be built. Both these features of the agreement are academic, given that Australian maritime facilities will be the colonial outposts for both US and UK nuclear submarines to operate in their flailing attempt to maintain power in the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n
But what of the lives engaged and lost in the whole nasty business? Getting submarines under the supposed Pillar One of the agreement is becoming an increasingly irrelevant feature of the pact: Australian sailors will be under the direction and supervision of the US Navy in any case. This means that any conflict the US engages in will automatically commit Australian defence personnel to it, whatever the wishes of parliamentarians in Canberra.<\/p>\n
This abominable policy has been clearly shown by the revelation \u2013 after much initial reluctance \u2013 by the Australian government that Australian sailors were present on a US nuclear-powered submarine, most likely the Virginia-class USS Minnesota, when it attacked the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka. The grotesque scene, which featured a devastating strike on the vessel with a Mark-48 torpedo killing 87 Iranian seamen, was shown with relish by Pentagon officials, drawing enthusiastic remarks from the US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth.<\/p>\n
The Albanese government would have stayed mum on the issue but for the <\/p>\n
reporting<\/a> by Nine News on 5 March that two Australian maritime personnel were in the attack submarine. An Australian Defence spokesperson <\/p>\n told<\/a> the outlet that, \u201cThere are long-standing arrangements to third country deployments to ensure Australian interests are managed appropriately.\u201d This degree of appropriation, questionable in the extreme, also involved not going \u201cinto these details.\u201d There were \u201coperational security reasons\u201d why the ADF did \u201cnot disclose specific details regarding third party deployments, including the number of personnel or their location.\u201d Going on to show a distinct lack of candour, the spokesperson went on to distance Australia from the operation. \u201cAs the United States and Israel have said, the military strikes were initiated and conducted by the United States and Israel \u2013 not Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n When the matter was brought up in Parliament by Greens Senator David Shoebridge, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong was limp with interest. \u201cThe US operations,\u201d she <\/p>\n responded<\/a> tersely, \u201care a matter for the United States.\u201d Shoebridge had been impertinent in asking \u201cabout Australian Defence Force personnel \u2026 for operational and security reasons, we do not disclose specific information regarding Australian personnel.\u201d With slavish indifference to corroborating the circumstances behind the strike, Wong took it at face value (dare one ever do otherwise with the Trump administration?) that the sinking of the Iranian frigate was justified because it was \u201cpreparing to strike\u201d. US government statements on this, however, remain nigh non-existent.<\/p>\n The foreign minister\u2019s response was as good as a confession, given that ADF personnel have been doing the rounds on US attack-submarines and undergoing training sessions in the US. In October last year, the Defence Department <\/p>\n revealed<\/a> that over 50 were serving on attack submarines operating out of Pearl Harbor, with 100 more training in the country.<\/p>\n Evidently realising that this was not a situation he could not contain, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese <\/p>\n